Columbia Closings   What's not in Columbia anymore

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I noticed this building a few weeks ago when I saw the realty sign, and really couldn't ever remember seeing it before though it has obviously been there for years.

There doesn't seem to be a street number anywhere on the front of it, and looking for the realtor info seems to lead to it being part of the adjacent Grice's property, which I'm pretty sure is wrong as my mother took me to Grice's a number of times and I don't remember any larger building being involved.

It has a large antenna attached, so it may have possibly been a dispatch location at one time. Any ideas?

UPDATE 20 June 2011: Commenter JB turned up the address for this lot, so I have changed the post title to give it as 1943 Huger Street rather than just "SW Corner of Huger & Senate". Also, with that address I have been able to turn up a bit more info and have added two businesses to the post title instead of just "Building".

First, here is the LoopNet sale listing indicating that the property is being sold as a warehouse.

Next, here is a link from the Secretary of State indicating that this property goes way back and that Barnett Tire & Battery company opened on the site in 1920(!) and was only "dissolved" in 2005. Now just because nobody bothered to formally dissolve the company before then does not mean that it was necessarily a going business to that point, but the fact that there seems to have been a good bit of activity in 2005 makes me think it may have lasted until then.

Also in 2005, Congaree Delivery Service filed for a certificate to be an in-state mover (at least that's what I get out of that PDF).

And finally in 2005 City Council declined to rezone the property so that a religious organization could set up there. I'm not sure if I understand the timeline here though, as the council meeting was in mid-Sept 2005 and Congaree was awarded its certificate in mid-Jan 2006. Unless they planned to share the building with the religious organization it doesn't seem to make sense. (Also the reasons given for denying the rezoning look pretty tenuous).

Here's a little 1940s building by the tracks at the start of Huger Street (that's you-gee street for you out-of-towners..), that has been, I'm sure, many more things than this list over the years since it was built.

To be honest, I have to say I can't personally remember any of them. It's a section of street I drive very seldom, and some of the tenants, for instance, a roofer, are pretty invisible until you actually need one. The most recent operation seems to have been The Dog Shack hotdog restaurant, which apparently set up shop in April of 2010, and was definitely open as late as 18 June 2010, when a group of Columbia hotdog aficionadoes visited and gave it a mediocre grade.

While I was taking pictures a train rolled through, backing up traffic on Huger. I imagine working all day in that location would get old pretty quick.

On the whole, Scriven's Alley doesn't sound like my kind of place, though I could have perhaps found some pasta I liked. The opportunity to grill your own food does sound pretty intriguing though. In the end however, it may have perhaps proved fatal to the business as the place burned down and was never rebuilt. I'm thinking that the Scriven's building was where that narrow vacancy right at the corner is rather than on the Hertz site. As I recall, it was a two story brick structure.

I had the impression that it was a pretty well thought of place, and I've always wondered why they never re-opened. I would expect most any building to have fire insurance, but perhaps they were down long enough for all the staff to disperse and the cash reserves to deplete.

F-Stop Camera Shop positions themselves as one of the last local photo stores. I'm afraid I haven't managed to visit yet, but from their site, it appears that they are following in the legacy of Jackson Camera with developing and printing supplies for the film photographer, and in fact go beyond that with rentable darkroom space.

They moved to 1224 B Huger Street (at Geddes Street) back in August. That leaves this stretch of Harden Street pretty well vacant, which is a shame, but the way it goes sometime..

(Hat tip to commenter ChiefDanGeorge)

UPDATE 8 February 2022 -- The State reports that 936 Harden is to become The Flying Biscuit Cafe.

Also adding map icon.

When I was small, Cromer's P-Nuts used to advertise locally a good deal, and their ear catching slogan, Guaranteed Worst In Town! certainly made an impression on me though we never shopped there that much.

The first Cromer's store I was aware of was on Assembly Street at Lady Street, where this building now stands:

My mother took us there a few times on downtown shopping trips, and I recall being impressed with the wide array of merchandise that included items I never saw anywhere else. A lot of these were carnival type "prizes", and indeed the store seemed much more focused on school fair fare than on peanuts. You could rent sno-cone and cotton-candy machines, cart mounted popcorn poppers and sets of helium cylinders for floating baloons. It was a fantastic assortment of stuff for which I would never have a need but which nonetheless fascinated me.

The Assembly street store was there at least into the late 1970s. I started driving alone in 1977, and I can recall taking a classmate of mine all the way from Polo Road to Cromer's on Assembly so we could buy some sno-cone cups for a science project. As I recall, the idea was to cut the tips off of them at different distances from the tops, giving a selection of different sized holes in the bottoms. We were then going to time how fast it took to drain a full cup in each case and relate that to some formula or other. Honestly, it was mostly an excuse to be away from school on a nice spring day (with permission) as much as anything else. My guess is that would have been 1978. Shortly after that, the downtown store burned down.

The downtown store wasn't the only Cromer's in town however. They also had a store inside of Dutch Square. It's hard to say exactly since the interior of Dutch Square has been remodelled since then, but I think the Cromer's was more or less in the spot now occupied by Trendz.

The mall store was smaller than downtown, but it had something downtown didn't have: Monkeys!

That's right, the entire back of the store was a glassed-in monkey-habitat, and there were always several monkeys there swinging around or doing things less salutory. I don't know exactly what the reasoning was -- The store didn't sell monkeys. It was purely a publicity gimmick, and as such I suppose it worked. Certainly it got kids who otherwise had no intention of buying anything into the store, and I would guess that once in, a certain number of them were going to spot something that caught their fancy.

I'm pretty hazy on when the Dutch Square store closed, and whether it was before or after the downtown store burned down, but I'm pretty sure it did not make it into the 80s.

In the same general time frame, Cromer's branched out to the Grand Strand, and opened a large store on US 17 just below Myrtle Beach in the general area of the Air Base (above Kroger and below what is now the Flea Market/Food Lion plaza).

I went in several times, and what I remember most is the "mongoose". It "lived" in a hollow stump-like construction with a trap-door lid over the top, and was fronted by a sign describing the mongoose with an emphasis on its speed and visciousness. The text ended with an invitation to view the magnificent creature by carefully raising the trap-door. By this point, nobody (other than a very small kid) would think there was an actual mongoose in there, but you were curious and you raised the trap. At which point there was some sort of recorded roar, and a spring-loaded beast would jump at you, like one of those snakes in the nut can, but worse. It never failed to get a few people to gasp, and for the rest of the store to wait in anticipation of the next person to fall for it.

I don't think the Myrtle Beach store made it into the 90s, and the place is now some sort of Harley Davidson shop.

In the meantime, Cromer's in Columbia regrouped, and opened a store on a small side street of Bluff Road near the Farmers' Market. I'm not sure when it opened, but it was there as late as 2005 as I finally needed one of those helium cylinders for baloons. At that point, it seemed to me that, given the non-foot-traffic location, Cromer's was focusing even more on event supplies than before, and that straight retail customers were not the norm.

Sometime between 2005 and now, Cromers returned to downtown. I suppose you could debate that, as it's not in the old downtown "shopping district", but I would say 1700 Huger Street (the corner of Huger & Blanding) counts. The new location shares a building with Cogdil Carpets.

Along with the new building, they now have a web site, but since I've never been in, I can't tell you if they have a monkey or a mongoose.

UPDATE 1 Aug 2009: This link has a picture of the Assembly street store burning down. It was taken by Robert Busbee of the Columbia Firefighters Association. The date given for the fire is 8 December 1993. A number of other historic fires are pictured on the Firefighters website. (Hat tip to commenter Brian).

UPDATE 21 April 2013 -- Commenter Melanie sends in this picture of the Dutch Square location *with monkeys*!

UPDATE 26 March 2018 -- The Huger Street location has now moved to North Main, see here